Coining Merc’s current naming structure, it’s a Mercedes-AMG G63 4Matic Colour Edition. Big name, but then it’s a big car, too.
The cost is no smaller, either. G-Wagen prices start at a whisker under £90,000 for a 241bhp diesel (really) while a G63 will set you back £133,775. This special edition – so named because you get your pick of five lurid colours, the one you see here ‘Solar Beam’ – hits £150,000.
That’s some price rise. There are bits of carbon and gloss black trim beside your hue choice, but this is a purely aesthetic upgrade. The mechanicals are untouched.
Well the G-Wagen itself is an archaic 4x4 which can trace its roots – and its breezeblock aerodynamics – back to the 1970s. Its ladder chassis puts it a long way behind more modern SUVs, of which the Mercedes range isn’t lacking.
Not, then, the natural home of a 571bhp, 5.5-litre twin-turbo V8 engine, just like the one in plenty of other AMGs. It is an absurd choice of powerplant, but there’s been an AMG in the G-Wagen range for a long time now. Updating its engine in line with the rest of the AMG range has formed a part of its enduring appeal.
Performance? It has a surprising amount of it, for what’s essentially a 2.5-tonne outhouse: the top speed is 130mph, following a 0-62mph sprint of 5.4 seconds.
While 322g/km of CO2 emissions is a figure from another, less-caring age, a quoted 20.5mpg is, relatively speaking, quite impressive, and nearly achievable. The incongruity of stop/start activating in something slanted so far away from economy is not lost on us, though…
It’s one of the few cars I’ve driven that I’d quite like to be slower. Honestly. Find a long, empty, straight piece of road upon which to explore its acceleration, and you’ll marvel at how it makes 40mph seem like 140. Whoever verified its top speed deserves a knighthood for bravery.
For a four-wheel-drive car with genuine off-road credentials, it wants for grip when deploying its power on a damp road. I reckon it would struggle with 300bhp, never mind its full 563.
Once you’re away, it blasts down the road in an unseemly and slightly troubling manner, but one so wild, you might secretly enjoy the madness. Never has a roofed car offered up so much adrenaline at entirely legal speeds.
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